CONFESSION FALSE, GUATEMALAN SAYS

By ALAN RIDING, Special to the New York Times

Published: December 18, 1981

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 17—
A Guatemalan peasant leader who was presented on Guatemalan television as a defector from a leftist guerrilla group has escaped and said he was forced to ''confess'' after torture and threats to his family.

A recorded message from the peasant leader, Emterio Toj Medrano, was played over five Guatemala City radio stations that were briefly seized Dec. 3 by units of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, one of four rebel groups seeking the overthrow of the army-backed Government of Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia .

In the recording, made available by Guatemalan exiles here who said they recognized his voice, Mr. Toj Medrano denied that he had surrendered to the army and asserted that he was kidnapped by police agents on July 4 this year in Quezaltenango, Guatemala's second largest city.

Mr. Toj Medrano's statement cast no light on the better-known case of a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Luis Eduardo Pellecer Faena, who has also been presented in public by the Guatemalan Government as a defector from the Guerrilla Army of the Poor.

'Most Incredible Torture'

Father Pellecer said at a news conference Sept. 30 that he arranged his own ''kidnapping'' last June in order to surrender to the army after becoming disillusioned with the rebel cause. But church offiials maintain he was abducted by armed men and was tortured and brainwashed before announcing his defection.

In the recording, Mr. Toj Medrano, who helped found the Committee of Peasant Unity among Guatemala's highland Indians in 1978, said he had been subjected to ''the most incredible tortures'' by army officers who also threatened to torture his wife and five small children, whom they claimed to be holding. ''In this way, they obliged me to retract my revolutionary militancy in public,'' he said.

The peasant leader said he was first presented as a rebel deserter late August before a visiting United States Congressional delegation, which included Representatives Thomas E. Petri, Republican of Wisconsin, and Patricia Schroeder, Democrat of Colorado.

''He seemed to be trying to signal us, 'Don't take everything I say seriously','' recalled Bruce Cameron, special assistant to Representive Thomas Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who was part of the delegation. ''He told us that he had never worked with the church in El Quiche, which was plainly untrue. It was such a glaring thing to say that I suspended any sort of evaluation as to his authenticity.'' Press Conference 'Prefabricated'

On Oct. 22, he was taken before the local press and television cameras. ''It was a prefabricated press conference with some pseudojournalists who were given questions beforehand just as I was given my answers as well as the text of my declaration,'' he said.

Mr. Toj Medrano said that he escaped from the Justo Rufino Barrios army barracks in Guatemala City on Nov. 26 when all but one platoon of soldiers normally stationed there were involved in a counterinsurgency offensive in western Guatemala. Guatemalan opposition sources here said it was not clear yet wheher he had been aided by rebels or by sympathizers within the army.

Following his flight, the Guatemalan Government maintained that he had been released by the authorities and subsequently captured by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor after he had agreed to infiltrate rebel ranks on behalf of the army.

In his 20-minute message, Mr. Toj Medrano said he had been taken under guard to different Indian communities where he was obliged to denounce the guerrillas. ''On Nov. 25, the day before my escape, I was forced to broadcast from a helicopter to various hamlets near Chichicastenango calling on the people to present themselves at the military barracks where the army had plans to kill them,'' he said.

The peasant leader also asserted that, during his captivity, he witnessed the murder of some prisoners and saw others being held in huge holes in the ground. ''The army has taken to kidnapping small children to oblige fathers and older brothers to surrender to military barracks,'' he said. ''In Chimaltenango, I saw a group of these unfortunate children with my own eyes.''